No. 62 of 74 (PAJ1976 - PAJ2049)

This is an extremely detailed proposal, to a scale measuring 120 feet and with a lettered key, for a small tidal dockyard. Its evident purpose is the maintenance and minor repair of small naval vessels on the two sloping 'slipps' flanking the central channel that runs back from the dock gate. Two smaller slips for boats lie beneath the Superintendent's House at the landward end. The other two views are transverse sections at right angles, on the axis of the channel and across it. While the drawing does not name Deal as the location, this was probably where Bray lived and it already had a small yard where the Navy built and repaired ships' boats, of which his proposal is a logical development. Whether he ever submitted it to the Admiralty for consideration is not yet known.

It is the only detailed technical drawing among 73 by him (plus one signed 'NF 1782') preserved in a 19th-century album. They have now been separately remounted. Bray (1750-1823), was second lieutenant of the 44-gun ‘Pallas’ under Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis (1744-1819) – later a well-known admiral - on two voyages (1774-77) to report on British interests in West Africa, including the slave trade. The dated drawings refer only to the first of these, from December 1774 to September 1775, though a few may be from the second. Others comprise country views, some of Deal, Kent (where Bray may have come from), and others of social-history interest.